Behavioural Science Summit 2024

Emily Allen, Marketing Research & Insights Manager, Google

@google

Emily holds a Master's degree in Marketing Research, and throughout her diverse roles in her six years at Google, she has worked on both B2C and B2B research teams spanning 20+ global markets. She regularly shares her expertise on consumer behavior and AI in marketing with audiences ranging from individual practitioners to C-suite executives at conferences and industry events across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Rachel Atchinson, Client Director, Qual & BeSci, Kantar

Rachel is a Client Director in Kantar's Qualitative team, with an expertise in Behavioural Science & Innovation. She has 9 years of experience in qualitative research and has brought in behavioural science thinking to solve challenges for Reckitt, Virgin Atlantic, Heineken, Coca Cola and Asahi. Rachel thrives in decoding the 'why' behind complex multifaceted elements of behaviour; by getting close to real people, harnessing the power of real world context and observations to capture the nuances of what people say they do VS what they actually do and critically, why. Leveraging these human insights, Rachel ultimately helps brands to drive growth and commercial success, increasingly solving penetration and 'brand choice' challenges as well as more 'traditional' behavioural briefs

Chris Aukett, Managing Director, The Big Picture

Chris is joint Managing Director of The Big Picture, a global insight consultancy specialising in design, innovation and brand strategy. 

Having started working life as a toy designer - not quite Tom Hanks in ‘Big’ but lots of fun - he has established himself as a leading voice in design insight, over 14 years, guiding global brands including Unilever, Beam Suntory and the International Olympic Committee. For Suntory, Chris has helped shape design and innovation strategy for Jim Beam, Courvoisier, Sipsmith and, of course, Basil Hayden.

Chris believes in the power of brand design to connect with people and create change, beyond simply transactional relationships, whether this be enhancing experiences, improving accessibility or elevating sustainability credentials. But people don’t think about design, they feel its impact – that’s what makes BeSci so incredibly relevant and powerful in researching it. 

Outside The Big Picture you’ll find Chris sat round the arts & crafts table with his two sons, or out running/cycling a trail.

Steve Banks, Strategy & Insight Lead, Scottish Government

@scotgov

Steve Banks is an insight and brand strategist who worked in London for leading market research and branding agencies including Firefish, Jigsaw, and Clear Ideas.? As a Research Director, he worked across a wide range of public and private sector clients honing his qualitative skills in both traditional and innovative methodologies.  

He then moved to Scotland where he is now working as a Strategy and Insight Lead, informing and developing health and international advertising campaigns for the Scottish Government.  Steve uses behavioural science to develop marketing strategies that deliver effective communications strategies that improve the lives of the people of Scotland. 

Sam Curtis, Head of Digital Analytics, Kantar

Sam is Head of Digital Analytics in Kantar UK, helping to shape how business access and deploy digital data in their organisations. He is an expert in scaling unstructured data solution having previously worked as CEO at Lifestream and Head of Client Strategy at Streetbees.

Katherine Ellicott, Research & innovation Lead, Keep Britain Tidy

Katharine currently leads the research and interventions team for Keep Britain Tidy’s major behaviour change programme aimed at getting smokers to stop littering their butts. She has almost 20 years’ experience in working on behaviour change projects and schemes to help to improve the quality of local areas for all. She has developed multiple policy and local environmental management materials for national and local government and other land managers, including the Green Flag for Parks Award Scheme. Katharine is one of the main researchers and the author of the latest revision of the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, a piece of secondary legislation for government.

Morna Hegharty, GroupM Nexus

Morna Hegharty is part of the Marketing Science team at GroupM Nexus, where she specialises in research and campaign effectiveness measurement. She is responsible for overseeing the company's research initiatives and communicating the findings to the broader organisation. She also works to enhance the effectiveness of the company’s measurement solutions through providing data-driven insights. Morna has a strong background in market research, where she designed surveys to meet client objectives, implemented fieldwork, analysed data, and generated insights to inform campaign strategy. Coupled with an MSc in Marketing with a focus on consumer psychology, her experience positions her as a valuable problem solver dedicated to delivering actionable insights that drive client success.

Tom Hoare, Commercial Lead, Vodafone UK

@VodafoneUK

Tom is the Commercial Lead within the Consumer unit of Vodafone UK where he is focused on commercially rationalising new propositions, and trading strategies. He researches and designs the mobile tariff portfolio and so is always looking for new opportunities and efficiencies that can be driven by customer behaviour. He has worked in Telco for several MNOs over the past decade. Having started in Finance at Vodafone UK, he moved into Portfolio and Pricing at EE during the time in which they launched 5G, Smart Plans and Unlimited Data. Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies with over 300 million customers in Europe and Africa. Vodafone UK serves more than 18 million mobile and fixed-line customers from its Newbury headquarters.

Katy Irving, Global Head of Behavioural Science, HRW Healthcare

@HRWShift

Katy Irving, the Global Head of Behavioural Science at HRW (Healthcare Research Worldwide), leads HRW Shift—a team of 17 multidisciplinary scientists transforming healthcare market research using behavioural science. Her journey began with quantitative media content analysis research, culminating in an MSc from the London School of Economics (LSE). Her dissertation explored gender representation in television medical dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House.” Since 2007, Katy has passionately contributed to healthcare market research. In 2016, she founded HRW’s behavioural science team, which has garnered industry acclaim. Katy is not only a trusted advisor to clients but also a sought-after speaker at conferences and client masterclasses. Notably, she has twice won the European Pharmaceutical Market Research Association’s ‘JH Award’ for best paper at conference.

Dr Adele James, Behavioural Scientist, Linney

Adele is a Behavioural Scientist at Linney, where she brings psychology and behavioural-science thinking to a wide range of client challenges.

Since gaining a PhD in Psychology in 2017, Adele has worked in insights to apply behavioural-science thinking to commercial research challenges across an extensive array of sectors, audience types and behavioural questions.

At Linney she spends her time conducting top-notch consumer research, using best-in-class methods to bring psychology-informed insights to Linney’s clients.

Her academic background is in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, with a particular focus on memory processes in the brain. She’s also interested in human factors and, to further her knowledge, she is studying a part-time course in this area, which has many parallels with behavioural science.

Alexandra Kuzmina, Innovation Consultant – Nova, MMR Research

Alexandra Kuzmina is an award-winning mixed methods researcher, futurist, and an early adopter of new technology. She holds an MA degree and has been trained in Behavioural Economics at MSc level. In her current role as an Innovation Associate Director at the tech innovation team NOVA at MMR Research Worldwide, Alexandra explores, interprets, and pressure tests new technology, software, hardware, techniques, and methodologies to ensure that they deliver value and are not just tech for tech’s sake.

Mark Lemon, Associate Director, Sign Salad

Mark is a Director at Sign Salad, and has worked as a semiotician and cultural analyst for 10 years. He leads Sign Salad’s language analysis offering, and has supported brands across the food and drink, energy, media, tech, healthcare, financial and public sectors – analysing wider cultural and category messaging. Recent projects include an analysis of the cultural construction of stigma for GambleAware, an analysis of the language of cancer for the Irish Cancer Society, and an investigation into the cultural perceptions of E-coli for a healthcare brand.  Each of these projects looked at how language and cultural cues can be utilised to positively influence and change attitudes and behaviours. Mark is a regular presenter at industry events and conferences – including the MRS - and holds an MA in Semiotics from the University of Tartu in Estonia.

Rich Lewis, Director, Decision Technology

@dectechconsult

Rich is a founding director of Dectech, one of the longest-established Behavioural Science consultancies. He has over two decades of experience advising private and public sector organisations across the world. Dectech has pioneered the use of immersive online experiments and their award-winning Behaviourlab approach has helped companies to understand and influence customer behaviour in financial services, telecoms, energy, and retail.

Samantha Lister, Head of Marketing Science, Advanced TV, GroupM Nexus

Samantha Lister is the Head of Marketing Science at GroupM Nexus where she is responsible for developing best-in-class approaches to maximising and measuring marketing effectiveness.  Previously she was Senior Director of Data Solutions at Finecast, responsible for the planning, audience and measurement strategy. Prior to Finecast, Samantha worked at GroupM and Videology. With 10+ years of Product and Operations experience in programmatic, video and TV, Sam is a product innovator and technology problem solver with a deep understanding of audience solutions and delivering customer value in the ever changing digital and TV landscapes.

Noemi Marelli, International Insights Lead, Suntory Global Spirits

Noemi Marelli is an international insights leader at Suntory Global Spirits. She has worked before for Danone, Heineken, and Kantar where she held different positions, gaining extensive experience in insights, research and analytics, branding, advertising, and innovation across multiple markets and brands.

Her passion is for understanding human needs, behaviors, and trends. Thus, she has developed her marketing career with a clear focus on bringing consumer-centricity to business decisions. She also frequently collaborates with universities and business schools, bringing real case studies to their students. 

In past years, Noemi has been an entrepreneur, launching and expanding a tourism company that still exists in different European cities, and hosts thousands of clients daily. 

In her current role at Suntory, she leads ambitious consumer insights and analytics initiatives for the scotch and prestige whisky portfolio.

Michal Matukin, Head of Neuroscience, Walnut Unlimited

Michal Matukin is the Head of Neuroscience at Walnut Unlimited where he is responsible for applying cutting edge methods to business challenges. He is a pioneer in the field of consumer neuroscience with extensive experience of applying neuro insights commercially. With over 15 years of experience in neuroscience, Michal is focused on building bridges between science and business to better understand consumers behaviour, motives, and drivers. He has a vast experience in various types of research methods from traditional qual & quant tools to neuro approaches. Applying neuroscience to marketing challenges is his thing.

Helen McFarlane, Sustainability Manager, McDonald’s UK and Ireland

I have worked for McDonald’s for more than 30 years, starting as a crew member and working my way up through the Operations hierarchy before joining the Sustainability Team in 2010. Since that time I have completed a degree in Environmental Studies with the Open University.

My team is responsible for the Circularity (Packaging and Recycling), and Climate Action strategies, and providing data for ESG reporting.

Our Circularity goals are to source all packaging from renewable, recycled or certified sources by end of 2024, and to recycle all restaurant waste by 2027.

Our Climate goals focus on the target McDonald’s UK and Ireland has set, which is to achieve net zero emissions in our restaurants and offices by 2030, and across our value chain by 2040. 

Callum McStay, UX Researcher, Linney

In the last decade, through his career and degree in Design and Ergonomics, Callum has sought to understand and champion the human in any experience whilst balancing business needs.

Whether the project be large scale or sprint-based, the experience physical or digital, a product or service, he employs a mixed-method approach ensuring attitudinal, behavioural and biometric sides are covered.

Callum loves geeking out on a project solo but also enjoys overseeing other researchers and working with a cross-disciplinary team – a significant benefit of working for a large creative agency such as Linney.

At Linney, Callum now has the freedom to spearhead an ambition of his: to remove UX research from the digital box it has been placed in, and enable the discipline to inform services and physical products.

Jack Miles, Senior Director, Northstar Research / HarrisX

Jack has 15 years' experience in solving brand's strategic marketing challenges. He specialises in quantitative research methods and insight communication. 

His work has contributed to outcomes like helping the new Land Rover Defender become JLR's second biggest selling car in its launch year, thought leadership research on the future of travel which reached 425mn people and accurately predicting the growth of Germany's smart home market. 

Jack has been shortlisted and won awards for Business Impact, B2B Research and Innovation in Data Analytics. Jack is also Research World's Editor-in-Chief and he's a regular contributor to publications such as Quirks, Research Live and WARC.

Dipesh Mistry, Director, The Behavioural Architects

@thebearchitects

Dipesh is a quantitative behavioural scientist with a BSc in Neuropsychology and an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience.

He has close to a decade’s experience in research, which has centred around applying his strong academic background to the commercial research sector. Dipesh’s career has centred around creating innovative methods to address a range of behavioural questions across a wide range of sectors.

Dr Nicki Morley, Head of Behavioural Science and Innovation Expertise, UK Insights, Kantar

Nicki leads our Behavioural Science thinking for Kantar UK, the world’s leading consumer insights and data business. With a PhD in behavioural science and postdocs in design thinking, she develops innovative approaches to help brands put people and context at the heart of their development, driving successful innovation and communications for behaviour change.

Our principal thought leader in innovation at Kantar, Nicki specialises in fast-moving consumer goods, including snacking, alcohol, homecare, and personal care. She provides expert advice and support on innovation and behavioural science to our biggest clients, guiding them on how to test, innovate, communicate, and design for change.

Nicki has over 13 years of experience working at Unilever in Consumer Insights teams in both R&D and Marketing, on brands like Surf, Comfort, Persil, and Cif. She is also the innovation sponsor for our global sustainable transformation practice at Kantar, offering support to clients aiming to design and communicate products with sustainability at their core.

Pradnya Naidu, Director, Integrated Insights – Prostate RLT, Novartis

Alex Peters, Lead, Behaviour Change Centre of Excellence, Reckitt 

Alex Peters leads behavioural insights at Reckitt. At Reckitt, Behavioural insights is all about bridging the gap between what people say and what they really do, and is leveraged across multiple societal and business goals, ranging from driving sustainable actions at home through to supporting consumer behaviour at the moment of purchase.

Ranging from foundational understanding of existing behaviours, all the way through to creating effective nudges that retain freedom of choice but help people to navigate the wide variety of choice available to meet their needs, the goal is ultimately to help Reckitt better support the needs and passions of our buyers and potential buyers of the future.

Caroline Simpson, Strategy & Insight Lead, Scottish Government

@scotgov

Caroline Simpson is an award-winning brand and communications strategist. Over her career, she has worked within numerous communications agencies across Scotland and London (Leith, Dentsu Creative and The & Partnership.)  As a Strategy Director, she has helped build businesses, brands and positive societal change working with clients such as Scottish Power, Scottish Government and Royal Bank of Scotland. 

Behavioural science is at the heart of Caroline’s strategic approach. Since taking up her role as Strategy and Insight Lead at the Scottish Government she has applied its theories to aid vaccine uptake, adult social care recruitment and adoption of net zero behaviours, to name a few. 

Nick Southgate, Behavioural Economist

Max Wiggins, Client Director, BeSci & Innovation, Kantar

Max is a Client Director in Kantar's Behavioural Science & Innovation team. He has over six years of experience in applying behavioural science to tackle key commercial challenges for companies including Unilever, Coca Cola, Mars, J.P. Morgan, The Gambling Commission, and Reckitt.

Armed with a MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, Max works best when playing at the intersection of behavioural insights and data. He currently helps brands ‘design for success’ by shaping their early-stage innovation strategies with applied behavioural thinking. Max has also cast his expertise to in-house innovation, creating Government-backed proof-of-concepts using behavioural data modelling to protect vulnerable people in online financial journeys.

Rosalind Wilson, Strategist, Hall & Partners

@HallandPartners

Rosalind is a Strategist at Hall & Partners Health, where she specialises in the application of behavioural science to the pharmaceutical field. With 4 years of experience in market research, Rosalind has developed a robust expertise in behavioural science and the application of her academic knowledge to industry solutions.

Rosalind holds an MSc in Health Psychology from UCL, which provided a strong academic grounding for a specialisation in behavioural science. Rosalind is motivated by the further development of behavioural science within the market research industry, and in particular today is excited to contribute to the ongoing conversation about its application within quantitative approaches. Particularly, how we can use advanced statistics to further develop and quantify our understanding of behaviour and start to tackle to problem of the predictability of future behaviour.